The Mary Celeste

by Stan Mason

  At least Lockhart had the courage to admit it. However, in 1929, a strange twist occurred in the saga. A book was published entitled ‘The Great Mary Celeste Hoax’ by Laurence J. Keating based on the Pemberton story written by Lee Kaye and produced by Chambers Journal in 1926. The hoax was at the expense of the public for there was little doubt that Lee Kaye and Laurence J. Keating were one and the same person. The probability that the latter name was authentic and the former a pseudonym is very likely, although the matter is beside the point. The duplicity in itself was clever. Lee Kaye, having written the first story, was criticised harshly in relation to the many inaccuracies in the first work. He then proceeded to correct them in a book under his real name at a later date. As such, with the presence of hindsight, he was able to present a theory and appease his critics with a more accurate story. The book was a much larger version of the original tale, with most of the error corrected, but the unchallenged text was expanded considerably. According to Keating, the name of the ship was changed to Mary Sellars on the twenty-sixth of March, 1867, when registered in the ownership of Messrs. Winchester, Hart and Briggs (Master). His version of how Mary Sellars earned that name is as follows:

  ‘Around the name of Mary Sellars hangs a quaint romance made use of by Winchester to mollify the salty Briggs. On the surface, it is only a typical American ship’s name - the United States Register, as is well-known, is largely filled with such denominations, but Mary Sellars was not merely a ehphonius fancy of Mr. Winchester’s: Mary Sellars from whom the name derived was a very real person: no one less than the sweetheart of Captain Benjamin Briggs, who was expected to appreciate the subtle compliment. Mary Sellars, it is pitiful to reflect, was the unfortunate lady who, as the wife of Captain Briggs, was destined afterwards to disappear with her husband and his crew from the celebrated and mysterious Mary Celeste. Her identity is strikingly confirmed, apart from private documents, by well-recorded official testimony, in the inventory of the articles found on board the derelict brig at Gibraltar. In 1872 are mentioned the books and music sheets which the Captain’s wife had taken aboard at New York. Some of them were endorsed ‘A present to M. Sellars from her sister, Alice. Jersey City, 1869. From this it appears that Mrs. Briggs of 1872, the owner of the music sheets and books, was the M - most certainly Mary -Sellars of 1869.

  Kaye or Keating seemed unable to write about the Mary Celeste without dabbling with distortions. It ws incomprehensible to consider that any reader would be influenced by such poppycock. To say it was sheer nonsense was an understatement. Could anyone believe that Captain Briggs had marred his childhood sweetheart whose name was Sellars? No record of this name was ever mentioned to be on books or music. What was Keating trying to prove? Was he implying that Captain Briggs had a sweetheart or a mistress? And where was this ship, the Mary Sellars, with its name painted on its bow? One can only imagine what was going through Keating’s mind at the time he wrote it. The author was determined to make an impact with the story...which is one of the reasons why he persisted in writing about it. The answer lay in sensationalism. Producing details which had never been mentioned before....something outstanding which threw doubts on the character of those involved. Who but Captain Briggs....the religious man of good character? He had to be the prime target. If the public changed their minds about him, new speculation would be rife. But, even though he had another clear shot at the mystery, Keating failed to get many of the facts right. There were heinous errors, some of which included a number of wrongly-spelt names, he commented that the bulk of the cargo was whale oil, and that the vessel was in poor condition. The most important part of the book related to the survivors, John Pemberton, ostensibly one of them, was born in Liverpool in 1847. He found himself heavily in debt to a boarding house-keep in 1870 and signed to serve on the Mary Sellars. The ship was renamed the Mary Celeste, sailing to Brazil three times, during which period, until November 1872, he was the cook. In 1929, Pemberton was still living near Liverpool. Jack (Chippy) Dossell, the boatswain, the other survivor, was believed to have died near Shrewsbury in 1017. He had sole slaves and potions for some years before dying from eating British war bread. Pemberton declared that the crew was paid off on arrival in New York in September, 1872, with the exception of himself, and he remained aboard to act as watchman. A problem arose when a cargo arrived in that Captain Briggs had not engaged a crew and, therefore, could not load the ship. He made an agreement with the Captain of the Dei Gratia, who had a crew but no cargo, to take some of the load, which allowed him to take his wife aboard what would have been an overloaded vessel. Briggs hired a Mate called Hullock who had sailed with him in 1868, but there was ill-feeling between them as he had been a suitor to Mrs. Briggs before she married the Captain. Unable to find a crew, Briggs sought the assistance of crimps....the boarding house keepers who pressed sailors into service for the price of food and lodging owed to them.....as well as help from the Dei Gratia. Ultimately, the most undesirable men were taken on board. Mrs. Briggs embarked with ‘Baby’....he cottage piano....and as she was near a dwarf there was an illusion that a child was on board. What happened to the Mary Celeste, according to Pemberton...as reported by Mr. Keating was as follows:

  ‘Of the ten persons on board, two were the Captain Briggs and his wife. The wife had a piano which in a heavy gale at sea broke loose, and before it could be secured crushed her so that she died. The Captain had been ‘sillyish’ before this event, but when his wife was killed he became insane and accused the mate, a huge man called Hullock and known as the ‘Baltimore Bully’ of murdering her. Briggs threatened to have the Mate tried and finally became so made that near the Azores he jumped overboard. The same Hullock was savagely attacked by one of the crew, Vendholdt, ‘a shanghaied lubber’ and in the struggle Vendholdt was accidentally hurled overboard and drowned. Thus, of the ten, three were drowned. Off the Azores, Hullock and two of the seamen deserted, afraid of being accused of mutiny and murder, of which in reality they were quite innocent. Four remained, three of whom had originally been lent to the Mary Celeste by the Dei Gratia. Hullock, it should be said, has been traced by Mr. Keating and lived til 1887 when he died at Curacao. When the Dei Gratia came up with the Mary Celeste, west of Gibraltar, and took off the four survivors of the Mary Celeste’s crew, she put on board a prize crew of her own. The Captain of the Di Gratia, ‘Moorhouse’, then ‘pitched a tale’ so as to establish a claim for salvage. The ‘fool’s luck’ (says the author) which enabled Captain ‘Moorhouse’ to baffle his keen-witted inquisitors and to bring this great hoax to a profitable outcome invests the voyage which enriched him with a piquant interest. The shipmaster himself, though not specially argute, was canny enough to know that his own experiences might react unfavourably, if examined, upon his story of finding a derelict.’

  The author also quotes many documents, some of which do not appear to exist,. There were also comments supposedly printed in certain newspapers - the publication of which was refuted by the appropriate editors. Initially, the work seemed to render the story of a convincing tale in a mass of detail but Keating was unable to assert that anything Pemberton told him was really fact. The only practical evidence about that sailor concerns his trip from Gibraltar on the eighteenth of December, 1872, in a vessel called the Colombian which reached Southampton five days later. This matter is confirmed in shipping records and, no doubt, Pemberton was a member of the crew. However, having heard the tale of the derelict ship while his vessel lay in Gibraltar, he invented a story, naming himself as the cook of the

  Mary Celeste. In truth, he had probably never laid eyes on the ship!

  In an article, in May 1929, the Evening Standard claimed to have interviewed John Pemberton, describing him as ninety-two years old and the sole survivor of the Mary Celeste, but the result was uninspiring. In an attempt to build on to the story, the New York Herald Tribune, in July 1929, contacted Mrs. Priscilla Richardson Shelton, the sister of the Mary Celeste’s Mate, Albert Richardson,
She was incisive in her comments, calling Pemberton an imposter and criticising Keaton for the claim. The interview caused a flurry of attention. Cooper Gaw, in the New Bedford Standard, on the fourth of August, 1929, denounced the Pemberton story in an item entitled ‘Facts Refute Mary Celeste Solution’. Four days later on the eighth of August, Frederick J. Shepherd re-entered the fray int eh Buffalo News. If any person had doubts about Mr. Shepherd’s ability to express himself in clear terms it would be dispelled by the bold statement: ‘Pemberton is a colossal liar!’ Presumably, he was so inflamed by the preposterous story that he felt able to risk litigation for libel. Understandably he was on safe ground.

  Three days later, the New York Herald Tribune’s book reviewer, Walter Willis, examined Keating’s work and reported on it adversely. However a contention occurred in another book review by Captain David W. Bone, of the New York Times. As an old salt, he obviously saw the details other people missed and on the eighteen of August, 1929, printed a most remarkable review. It would be mentioned that, at that time, there were two conflicting camps of thought concerning the mystery of the Mary Celeste. A few believers of Pemberton’s story hung rigidly to the essence of the tale, while the disbelievers attacked it fiercely on the grounds that most of the facts were false. Captain Bone had become one of the former, supporting it as a ‘Forecastle Classic’. This review caused Frederick J. Shepherd to write to the New York Times on the first of September, 1929, to challenge the Captain’s acceptance of the story and, after further minor comments, both writers left the public scene.

  The Saturday Review of Literature on the fourteenth of September, 1929, merely quoted the information provided by Keating’s publisher, which was a summary of the book. On the next day, it was followed by an article in the New York Sunday World entitled: ‘William McFee solves the Mystery of the Mary Celeste.’

  This work reiterated the theory that the vessel had been abandoned through fear of an explosion....an old worn chestnut unworthy of repetition.

  On the thirteenth of October, 1929, Keating replied to his critics in the New York Times and stood his ground firmly. Insisting that Mrs. Briggs had been Mary Sellars, he asserted there was no child aboard. It was the author’s view that his facts were as correct as the details anyone else had provided in a mystery which no one had solved. Evidently, after fifty-seven years, little information or documentation could be found to tidy up the problem.

  J.G. Lockhart made his exit on the subject in his book ‘Strange Tales from the Seven Seas’ which was published in 1929. He called the story of the derelict ‘Last Thoughts of the Mary Celeste’. In his opinion, Mr. Keating found an old sailor in Liverpool who said he had been a member of the crew of the derelict vessel and had dug into old files to find details which gave Pemberton’s yarn a ring of truth. In effect, he improved on Conan Doyle’s story of the intact boats, encroached upon J.S. Chapman’s version concerning the appearance of a tramp steamer, changed Abel Fosdyk’s ‘Baby’ into a piano, also adopting from the same work the claim that the Captain of the Mary Celeste went insane, and included Bernstein’s theory of a love affair on board ship. Lockhart describes Keating’s work in as many words as a hybrid of all stories and opinions gone before , with the exception of the fumes or explosion theory. However a new facet had been introduced by Keating which did not escape Lockhart’s notice and he had the temerity to mention it. Keating claimed that the Dei Gratia sighted the derelict on the fourth of December, 1872, and caught up with her on the following day. Yet early reports of the discovery of the Mary Celeste stated she was found on the fourth of December. But the Dei Gratia was still keeping New York time and the date was really the fifth of December. For this reason, Keating believed that Captain Morehouse had been following the Mary Celeste for twenty-four hours. The Captain of the Dei Gratia had manoeuvred his position and, as the sails on the yards of the derelict were changed during those two days, Morehouse had been up to no good at all. Naturally Keating was unable to prove any details on this matter....nor was anyone else able to disprove it. Lockhart had the last word, however, when he summed up Keating’s book.

  Mr. Keating entitled his book ‘The Great Mary Celeste Hoax’. Can it be that he christened it more appropriately than he intended?

  Lockhart’s play on words was far more subtle than Fredrick Shepherd’s blunt expression, but the meaning was identical. Some months passed before a new series of authors came on the scene. On the nineteenth of March, 1930, an advertisement was placed with the Liverpool Echo by J.C. Anakin requesting John Pemberton to communicate with him. It proved to be a complete waste of time because no one responded. On the following day, the Liverpool Post & Mercury printed a brief item to suggest that Pemberton had been seen in Liverpool a month earlier but that all attempts to trace him had so far come to nothing. In July, 1931, Harold T. Wilkins wrote an article for the Quarterly Review entitled ‘Light on the Mystery of the Mary Celeste’. He was very careful to avoid the many inaccuracies which had created pitfalls for other writers, supporting the theory of violence on board. He believed that the Mate of the Dei Gratia knew more about the mystery than he cared to admit and suggested that, in the hands of a skilful barrister at the Old Bailey, a harsh cross-examination might have forced him to come clean. There were also allegations against the crew of the Dei Gratia, although noting sinister was ventured or exposed. Nonetheless, there were many questions which remained unanswered for which the author sought guidance. For example, why did Sir James Cochrane censure Deveau for doing away with vital evidence on board the Mary Celeste which rendered necessary the analysis of the supposed blood stains? Why did he clean with lemon the supposed blood marks on the picturesque, and unusual, sword found on the floor of the Captain’s cabin? What were his motives in so destroying the evidence? Wilkins observed quite plainly in reference to Deveau that these do not look like the unthinking actions of a seaman totally innocent and completely ignorant of the requirement of Courts of law and justice. The author also carried out a great deal of research which included contacting the surviving relative of the ill-fated vessel. The sister of the Mate, Albert Richardson, wrote to him in despair concluding that the mystery would never be solved as the only people who could throw light on the tragedy were the crew of the Dei Gratia, and they had long disappeared. It could well be that a chance question raised by her in that letter instigated Wilkins to adopt his own theory. Priscilla Richardson Shelton wrote to him in her letter:

  ‘Did it ever occur to you that they (the crew of the Dei Gratia) were responsible and foully murdered the crew of the Mary Celeste. By some means, they were decoyed to the other vessel, or part of them, then the extermination of the rest was easy as they carried no firearms for protection.’

  After such sombre and realistic stuff, it was refreshing to return to the efforts of J.L. Hornibrook. He had advanced the giant octopus theory in 1904, so his new theory, published in Chambers Journal in March, 1933, as ‘New Light on the Mary Celeste’ was bound to capture the interest of some outward-thinking readers. This time his effort proved to be less sensational, although interesting. If it wasn’t a giant octopus then it had to be pirates! There was no other explanation! He pointed out that a rusty cutlass which was found on the vessel’s deck supported his theory, and continued:

  ‘Let it be borne in mind that it was only fifty-six years previously that Lord Exmouth had bombarded Algiers and forced the Bey to release through thousand Christian slaves who had been held in bondage. It is true to say that piracy in the main was suppressed by this action, but that it was revived in a smaller way is certain. There is no doubt that these Riff pirates were active in the early ‘seventies’. The early hours of a dark December morning would be the very time chosen for an attack on such a vessel as the Mary Celeste. It is not difficult to conjure up a picture of the scene on board at the moment. Beside the man at the wheel, there was probably only one other seaman on deck. Suddenly he caught sight of the Moorish galleys dashing down
on the brig. He raised a shout and ran for the nearest weapon which happened to be the cutlass. This weapon, as was ascertained at Gibraltar, was usually stowed away in the locker aft. Armed with the cutlass, he made for the bows where he may have seen the pirates in the act of clambering on board. The noise and shouting brought the remainder of the crew tumbling out on deck. Captain Briggs rushed up from the cabin, followed by his wife and child. One and all were instantly secured and hustled into the galleys lying alongside. The raiders then turned their attention to the cargo from which, no doubt, they hoped to load their craft with plunder. They lifted off a hatch, flinging it on the deck in their haste to discover what was stored in the hold. To their disgust, they found it to contain alcohol. That was enough to render them furious. Alcohol is anathema to the Moslem Moor. By this time, it was probably daylight and they may have caught sight of the topsail of the Dei Gratia (the ship which found the abandoned brig) in the distance. They scrambled back to their galleys, not caring in what condition they left the brig. One shudders to think of the fate in store for the captives. Hustled away inland, driven on relentlessly day after day, with lifelong slavery awaiting them at the end of their journey.....that was their destiny. Better by far they had found a grave in the depths of the Atlantic.’